Gingrich described Harper as a "conservative and pro-American" prime minister who is being forced to consider selling Canadian energy to China because of Obama's decision on Keystone. "What (Harper) has said is he's going to cut a deal with the Chinese and they'll build a pipeline straight across the Rockies to Vancouver," said Gingrich, referencing the proposal for the Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to the B.C. coast.

"Now, an American president who can create a Chinese-Canadian partnership is truly a danger to this country."

Gingrich was picking up on the growing sense that Canada is turning to China as an energy partner as an alternative to the United States.

Harper may very well enjoy a closer relationship with a like-minded conservative, such as Gingrich or even Mitt Romney, than with Obama. We'll have to wait until November 2012 to find out.

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Gingrich's resurgence and eventual victory was unexpected, to say the least. As of a week ago, he was polling around the middle of the pack and few expected his candidacy to take off in South Carolina. He experienced a small bump in the middle of the week, when Texas Gov. Rick Perry dropped out of the race and threw his support behind the former speaker of the House. But that spark was nearly doused when his ex-wife gave an interview to ABC News claiming that he'd asked her for an open marriage while engaging in an affair with Callista Bisek, a Hill staffer who has since married Gingrich and taken his last name.
South Carolina voters seemed largely unfazed by this development, however, and Gingrich managed to use the interview to his advantage during the week when he was asked to answer a question about it at a GOP presidential debate.

Romney has lost his status as the presumptive GOP nominee with his second-place finish in South Carolina. He had a chance to effectively lock up the nomination with a win in the Palmetto State on Saturday, but instead he'll be forced to fight through the inevitable slog of campaigning in later primary states. His attempts to paint himself as the candidate most qualified to fix the economy and best suited to defeat President Barack Obama appeared not to resonate in South Carolina, a state that has accurately selected the Republican nominee in every election since 1980.

South Carolina remained relevant for all of 15 seconds after the polls closed tonight. Then, with the cable networks quickly calling the race for Newt Gingrich, campaigns began scrambling toward the next primary state: Florida.
Battered by his large defeat, Mitt Romney led the charge south. His staff began promoting their Florida plans just minutes after polls closed at 7 p.m., and Romney supporters belted out Florida chants while waiting for their candidate to speak. His mentioning of the state earned him massive cheers.
Rick Santorum, finishing a distant third, was also eager to put South Carolina behind him. The former Pennsylvania senator quickly announced campaign events in Florida for Monday and Tuesday.
But even the candidate who owned the night in South Carolina appeared to be moving rapidly on to the next contest. Newt Gingrich quickly tweeted that Florida would be the "knockout punch" for Romney and urged his followers to donate to his campaign.

Nikki Haley was a Tea Party darling in 2010, riding their support to the South Carolina governorship. Mitt Romney featured her in a commercial as late as Friday (a video that was rapidly unlisted from his YouTube page), hoping to capitalize on her conservative credentials in a state where exit polls showed 65 percent of voters supported the Tea Party.
But the Haley strategy backfired in epic fashion: A PPP poll showed that her endorsement actually made a quarter of South Carolina voters less likely to choose Romney. Only 14 percent said her endorsement would have a positive effect.

Evangelical and Tea Party voters proved to be influential demographics in the South Carolina primary. As exit poll data showed Saturday night, 65 percent of voters in the primary identified themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians. The data also found that 65 percent of voters supported the Tea Party movement. In conservative South Carolina, the two groups may have meant all the difference for Newt Gingrich.

President Barack Obama will eventually have to face one of the remaining four GOP presidential candidates. The longer they are forced to focus their attention and attacks at each other, the better for Obama. With the GOP primary now expected to go until May at least, Obama will be able to run a positive campaign, attempting to rally his supporters around his first-term record, while letting his challengers tear each other to shreds.

Gingrich's momentum was largely spurred by strong debate performances during the week before the South Carolina primary. While he stood strong on stage with his fellow candidates, the most memorable -- and most roundly applauded -- moments came when he turned his tongue on the moderators of the debates.
He received a standing ovation for ripping into Fox News' Juan Williams after he asked a question about Gingrich's controversial statements on race and poverty. He received a similarly roaring response when he eviscerated CNN's John King for asking him about a recent interview his second ex-wife gave in which she claimed that Gingrich had asked her for an open marriage.